


HTAF Asides

by docemoon145



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22481566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/docemoon145/pseuds/docemoon145
Summary: A collection of asides from Hey There Angel Fins that were really fun to write but didn’t fit in with the main canon. Often, they will star side characters or characters the author is apparently obsessed with.Chapters will be marked canon or non-canon, fluff angst or both, and approximately where they fall in the timeline relative to the main canon.
Comments: 36
Kudos: 124
Collections: Hey There Angel Fins





	1. A Bad Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Hey There, Angel Fins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17948678) by [docemoon145](https://archiveofourown.org/users/docemoon145/pseuds/docemoon145). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *In which Axe spontaneously forgets the past several months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after chapter 32 of HTAF.
> 
> Non-canon | Angst

Axe was outside the den, hiding amongst the sand with his stealth magic. He could hear humming. There was a goat mermaid tending to some kind of garden while swishing his fins in a good mood. Axe licked his lips; he looked tasty. 

He started to creep closer. Slowly, carefully. It was always best to be cautious. Thankfully, because of that slow pace, there was time for a sense of wrongness to seep into his bones. Wrong. Something was very wrong. What was it? Axe pulled back and hid behind a rock. It was better not to start a fight when something felt this off. What was it? Just what…?

Ah. He wasn’t hungry. 

That was good. Knowing that meant he had time to figure things out. He wasn’t hungry, so he must have recently eaten. This was a mermaid, a shallow water creature. It was alive, and the water was surprisingly bright now that he noticed it. He was in the shallows. How he’d ended up there didn’t matter right now, that was just the way it was. The mermaid was humming and at ease, so this was within his territory. Axe was fed and in a mermaid’s territory. Had he been hunting here? He focused on his sense of smell, but there wasn’t a powerful blood smell. There was some old blood he could smell nearby, but that was more likely to be the mermaid’s food stock, since this was their territory. Had he been raiding it?

Axe discovered a familiar smell and swam toward it. As he took a sharp turn, he felt something clack in his rib cage. Reaching inside, he found a hard metal object. What was this? Why did he have it? It looked alien…

When Axe picked it up and turned it over, one side of the thing lit up. There were markings on there that he could understand for some reason.

“Property of Axe.

Your memories are in here.

Don’t break it.

Password: 1111”

There was a divot on the smooth surface, so Axe felt at it curiously. When he pressed down on it, a selection of symbols appeared, and he recognized the symbol “1”. Axe pressed it four times, and the image on the screen changed. There were lots of confusing squares, and another image in the background with writing on it.

“You’re in the shallows.

You live with mermaids.

Don’t hunt them.

Crooks is safe. 

Ask him if you need help.”

The image also had red circles surrounding two of the squares. Axe tapped one and found a lot of words. They were apparently things he’d written so he wouldn’t forget. The other square was full of pictures. Axe recognized the goat mermaid from earlier in a few of them. It was good he hadn’t attacked him.

Now that he understood the glowing metal thing and had some idea what the general situation was, he went back to following the familiar smell. Axe found Crooks inside of a strange coral structure. He appeared to be cleaning kicked-up sand out of the porous holes in the wall. Finally Axe came out of stealth. Crooks turned around and gave him a pleasant smile, and Axe’s bones felt cold.

He didn’t look like Crooks, but he smelled like Crooks, and he felt like Crooks. But Crooks had messed up teeth. This Crooks didn’t have messed up teeth. Did they get fixed somehow? Did Crooks find a way to heal them? Or were there wrong memories mixed in with the few memories he had? Axe was so confused, but this _felt_ like his brother, so he decided to trust him. If he was wrong, he could fight. He still had his weapon that felt so very familiar in his hand.

“Bro?”

“Yes, Axe? Is there something you need?”

Axe held his head and screwed his forehead up. “... M’not doin’ great.”

Crooks quickly put down the fluffy thing he’d been dusting with and swam over to Axe, gently holding his shoulders.

“Do you feel sick? Does your head hurt?”

That was a leading question. Axe felt even more confused now, wondering why Crooks would ask that.

… No. The off feeling, the strange device with messages meant to quickly clue him in on the situation, his lack of memories, his brother’s reaction. This sort of thing… it happened a lot, didn’t it?

Axe moved his fingers over his skull, and they quickly found a jagged opening. He felt around it more, and it was big. A cold shiver traveled up his spine.

“It don’t hurt,” he said at the same time as he realized that the hole was, in fact, an old wound. “Shit...” 

Crooks’ concerned expression became less urgent and more gentle, “Do you know where you are?”

“Yeah, figured dat out. Figured lots of it out.” He took the metal thing out of his ribcage. “Dis thing helped fill in some blanks.”

Crooks sighed in relief. “Good. I’ll say it anyway just to be clear. We’re in a safe place surrounded by friends, okay?”

Axe nodded. He got it. He more or less knew what was happening, but he didn’t know how things had turned out this way. And even if he knew what the current situation was, it was still something he had no memory of. Some things felt familiar, but other things didn’t, and the dissonance made him very uncomfortable.

Crooks, meanwhile, was feeling relieved that his brother was so clever. It wouldn’t be strange if he forgot where he was and started hunting their friends for food, but that had never happened. He’d always realized that the situation didn’t make sense and paused to figure it out before doing anything rash.

“It’s okay,” Crooks said reassuringly. “You’re feeling a little confused right now, but I’m here to help. I can walk you through it. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Axe grimaced. That was the sort of questioning and reassurance you gave when you were practiced with it. This definitely happened a lot.

“... We were gettin’ ready ta fight off da people dat wanted ta eat ya.”

Crooks’ face screwed up—only for a second, but it sent a painful stab into Axe’s heart. How long ago had that been for him?

“Well,” Crooks cleared his throat, “this is a bad one. Those people came. You protected me, but you got hurt doing it. We hid in a cave for a while, and then a kind person came and helped us. His name is Black. He gave us food, and his mother, Red, taught us a way to come live in the shallows. This is a complex school full of mermaids, meroctopuses, and, well, us, but everybody is kind. Do you understand?”

Axe hesitated and nodded. The idea of living with meroctopuses was pretty unusual, but he could accept it. “How long we been here for?”

Crooks’ eyelights drifted off to the side guiltily. “A few months…”

Axe sucked in a breath and let it out slowly to calm himself. “M’ I gonna remember any of dis?”

His brother’s narrow face relaxed a little. “You usually do. It’s always a mystery to me what you do and don’t remember on any given day, and you’ll lose little things easily, but large gaps of time like this tend to come back fairly quickly.”

Crooks gave Axe a reassuring hug, and Axe sighed. This was definitely something Crooks was used to dealing with. He felt like trash for making his brother put up with something like that.

“I don’t remember ya lookin’ like dis.” Axe mentioned.

Crooks smiled softly and took the metal thing away from him, pulling up a moving, speaking image of Axe’s brother on the screen. He was crying and thanking Axe for helping him get his teeth fixed.

“I’d rather you remember _this_ version of me, you know?” Crooks smiled wryly, pointing at his new teeth.

Axe forced a chuckle, but really, he’d be happy to remember anything at all.


	2. An Early Healing Session with Geno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *In which Geno is dumb and asks Crooks about sensitive topics, then gets his tail scared off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place around chapter 29 of HTAF.
> 
> Non-canon | Angst

Geno had been stuffing his non-existent fins in his mouth for a while now. Eager to change the topic, he went and said something else stupid to the person healing him. 

“Axe’s skull aside, why can’t you fix those teeth?”

Crooks reflexively hid his mouth behind his hand and hunched his shoulders even more than he already was.

_ Crap, I hit a sore spot didn’t I? _ “S-sorry…”

“Oh! Um, no, I’m sorry.” Crooks forced a smile, but he was still hiding his nightmarish mouth. “I’d like to get them fixed someday, but healing magic can’t do anything about natural deformities.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

Crooks chuckled helplessly, “Well, have you ever known a deformed mermaid?”

Geno wasn’t sure he could say he’d ever seen an  _ unattractive _ mermaid, let alone a deformed one. They were a pretty blessed species.

“No… Is that sort of thing, uh, common where you’re from?” 

What a stupid question. Geno had been intending—just a little bit—to express some interest in Crooks’ life to try and make up for all the stupid shit he’d been saying, but what a pathetic attempt. Why would  _ birth defects  _ and  _ deformities _ be common? He sounded like he was looking down on creatures from the deep—calling them ugly… So far that was true of the ones he’d met, but that didn’t mean he could  _ say  _ so!

“Unfortunately yes.”

_ Wh...at? _

“Hey, we’re talking about birth defects here, not just bad genes, right?” 

Geno mentally kicked himself in the gut for implying Crooks had bad genes. Which—again—he did! But that didn’t mean he could say so!!

Crooks lowered his head. “Yes, I understand the difference.”

"What the hell is it like in the deep ocean?" he muttered without thinking.

Crooks smiled at him. It was the sort of gentle smile an adult would show a child when they were hiding many frightening things.

"Sorry. There's a soft ban on talking about it. I accidentally gave Blueberry nightmares by saying too much. But, you're an adult, so if that explanation doesn't satisfy you..."

_ No, I'm satisfied. I don't want to hear anymore ever again. _

"It's the sort of place that scares Red and my brother. Does that put it into perspective?"

_ What kind of place is that?! _

"Not enough? Hm... I guess, imagine a place where meroctopuses are prey and people turn up dead or missing in the morning that were doing fine the previous evening."

"Now then," Crooks smiled, "please try to keep still. I'm not done healing you yet. These muscle spasms may indicate a more serious condition than I thought."

"What muscle spasms? I'm trembling, you know?"

Crooks tipped his head innocently. "What? But I haven't even said anything scary yet."

_ These three are all demons, and they're the ones who couldn't hack it and left?! Thank gods I took the ship down over relatively shallow waters... _


	3. The Confessional of Axe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *In which Crooks has self-esteem issues and a heart-to-heart with Axe.  
> *Also in which Crooks is aware of Axe's continuing crush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before chapter 30 of HTAF.
> 
> Non-canon | Angst, with a hint of fluff

The school was taking a group picture.

“I’ll take the picture,” Crooks volunteered.

Toriel smiled appreciatively. “Will you, dear? Thank you.”

“Of course. Everybody please line up.” Crooks swam back far enough to get everybody in frame. “Alright, smile.”

Crooks pressed the button a few times in succession and looked through Toriel’s photos for the best one. “There. You all look lovely,” he smiled, and Toriel took the phone back.

“Why do you not go join the others, dear, and we will get a photo with you too,” the old goat smiled.

Crooks’ soul sank, but he smiled. “Oh, right. Thank you, Tori.”

“Everybody smile,” she called.

Everybody gathered around to see the pictures, so Crooks joined them. He was grateful to his poor vision for letting him look at the picture without seeing anything detailed.

***

Crooks sat in his room alone, staring down at the phone Axe had insisted he get and the text notification that surely contained the pictures they’d all taken together.

_ I’m such a coward, _ he thought.  _ For not wanting to deal with unpleasant things, and for not being able to tell anyone so. _

He took a deep breath and forced himself to take a look. Yeah, it was bad. He locked his phone only a second after the image loaded and tipped his head back to stare at the plain coral ceiling, like it was a palate cleanser for his eyes.

Crooks couldn’t stand the way he looked. It was just so… so far removed from how he was as a person! He was shy and optimistic; gentle, nurturing, and friendly. But he had a pointlessly massive body; dull, dingy coloring; sickly, brittle bones; and a face that was pitiable at best and frightening at worst! He just… didn’t feel comfortable in his own body.

And he was a  _ coward _ for pretending he was over it. The healthy thing to do would be to open up to his friends and let them reassure him and help him to like himself. Instead, he was just holding out for his teeth to get fixed, pretending that everything would be fine after that. And it  _ was _ an unhealthy mindset.

Crooks took a shaky breath and went to go tend to his emotional state in the most anonymous way he knew how. He went to talk to Axe.

Axe was in his room. It was late at night, after all. Crooks didn’t even have to try to wake him, though. Axe’s glimmering red eyelight lit up the room as soon as he passed through the doorway. 

“Wha’s up, bro?”

“May I have a private conversation with you?” Crooks asked quietly. “I don’t want you to take any notes or anything.”

Axe blinked. He clearly realized he was about to be abused as a therapy tool thanks to his reliably terrible memory, but if Crooks was asking for that… He nodded.

“Sure. Go ahead n’ say anythin’. I’ll make sure ta forget.”

Crooks sighed in relief and slouched more than usual. “Thank you, Axe. I’m sorry, I know this is pathetic—and rude to you on top of that.”

“S’ fine. What’s eatin’ ya?”

“You remember why you never lie to me, right?”

Axe tilted his head and came up with a reason on the spot, “‘Cause I’ll get caught?”

“Right,” Crooks nodded. “So, I know you lied to me… it was only once, but I noticed it.”

Axe went stiff. He could only think of one thing he would lie to Crooks about. He hoped he’d forgotten some other petty lie.

“Uh, shit. Sorry. What’d I lie about?”

“You said you forgot who you liked before your head injury, but they way you treated me never changed. You still have romantic feelings for me, don’t you?”

Axe was frozen still like a corpse, his thoughts a mess of static.

“I’m not mad,” Crooks sighed, “it’s just pertinent information for what I want to talk about. Just answer honestly.”

The corners of Axe’s mouth twitched, and he wore a tragically sad smile; a look Crooks couldn’t remember ever seeing on him before.

“M’sorry.”

Crooks shook his head and carefully put a hand on Axe’s shoulder. “It’s… not good, but it’s not your fault.”

Crooks took his hand back and cleared his throat. “Anyway, that’s not what’s bothering me.”

“Dere’s somethin’ worse den dat?” Axe chuckled awkwardly.

“I keep lying to everyone,” Crooks jumped right into the main issue. “I let them think that they’ve cheered me up and I’m fine with the way I look, but it isn’t true.”

Axe listened quietly. He knew, obviously, that Crooks wasn’t exactly at peace with his appearance. Axe was way too observant and way too familiar with Crooks to be fooled by such a thin act.

“The truth is, I can’t even look at myself… But I really don’t know how much of that is just in my head. I want you to tell me frankly, exactly how bad it is, on a scale from one to ten.”

“By whose standards?” Axe, forever a logical creature, asked.

“First… by the shallows’ standards.”

“Negative one.”

Crooks felt himself tearing up. He rubbed his small, sunken sockets and choked out, “Really?”

“Sorry,” Axe said sympathetically. “Jus’ bein’ a shark already don’t help any up here.”

Crooks sniffled and took a shaky breath. “And by the surface’s standards?”

“Maybe a one.”

Crooks blinked in confusion, then he understood. “Because they don’t have a prejudice against sharks?”

Axe nodded.

“Alright… Next, by mershark standards.”

“Four.”

Crooks lowered his head, but he nodded somberly. “... Thank you. I thought so, but—everyone here is so accepting and encouraging, I almost thought it was just in my head.” He sniffled and begged slightly, “I really am that ugly?”

Axe scratched his cheekbone and rolled his overblown eyelight up to the ceiling. “Uh… well, yeah… I guess.”

Crooks took a deep breath. “Okay. Lastly, in your personal opinion.”

“Ten,” Axe said without hesitating.

Crooks frowned. “Don’t fudge it up just to make me feel better.”

“M’not. Yer a ten.”

Crooks looked at him flatly. “I don’t believe you.”

“Ya asked 'how bad is it?' Dat means, how much do yer looks take away from how attractive ya are, right?”

Crooks cocked his head. “I suppose that’s a reasonable way to interpret the question.”

“Den ya asked fer my personal opinion.”

“Right.”

“I think yer perfect.”

Crooks straightened his back and blushed, sputtering. “W-well it was my mistake to ask you.”

Axe rubbed the back of his head. “... Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t usin’ dis as an excuse ta come on ta ya. Jus’ wanna get across dat anyone who falls in love wit’ ya s’gonna think yer perfect.” 

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Crooks said, “and I don’t mean to sound self-centered, but the issue here is how I feel about myself.”

Axe took a breath. “When ya fall in love wit’ someone, yer opinion of yerself’ll get so caught up in dem dat... trust me, it won’t matter.”

Crooks frowned and swam a little closer. “Axe—“

He held up a hand to stop Crooks from talking and dug the fingers on his other hand into his dead socket, smiling tensely. “M’gonna be glad when I forget dis talk happened.”

***

“Hey, bro?” Axe called as Crooks was leaving. “Can I at least write down dat ya know I like ya?”

Crooks sighed. “Yes. And perhaps also add that my opinion remains unchanged.”

“Yeah,” Axe murmured, so quietly.


	4. Arm Wrestling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *In which the school has an arm-wrestling competition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the pre-Geno era of HTAF. (Too lazy to look up chapter numbers rn)
> 
> Canon | Slice of Life

After defeating Toriel, who was surprisingly a good challenge, Undyne looked around and spotted Crooks watching from a bit off. She grinned dangerously. 

“Okay, your turn.”

“Oh! Um…” he lowered his head sheepishly. “Maybe… not… with you.”

“I’ll go easy on you!” she persuaded. 

Crooks sighed and swam forward, clasping her hand and gripping the table. 

“Alright!” The fish woman grinned. “Ready, set, go!”

The match started, and the back of Crooks’ hand immediately slammed against the table. He winced and took it back to rub, applying just a hint of green magic to the brittle bones. 

Undyne’s eyes flicked to the side and noticed Axe shooting her a very menacing glare, but she ignored him. She looked back at Crooks and showed him a disbelieving smile. 

“You’re supposed to start on go, you know, Crooks?”

He returned a very mild glare. “At what point did I mistakenly give you the impression I was the least bit strong?”

"Uh, well..."  Undyne caught Axe still glaring at her and huffed. “What? You want a match?”

Axe’s smile tightened, his eyelight wobbled in its socket, and his phalanges twitched actively.

“Please don’t push him,” Crooks sighed. “He’s behaving himself.”

“Doesn’t really look like it from here,” she muttered gruffly. 

Crooks frowned. Undyne and Axe had somehow managed to avoid coming to blows until now, but their relationship was still strained. His frown turned tired and he set a hand gently on the mermaid’s shoulder.

“Please let it go. He’s just very protective of me.” He paused. “I used to  _ need _ him to be that way. Understand?”

Undyne’s eyes flickered with guilt, and she turned her head away, clicking her teeth. “Yeah, I know.” She blew out a breath through her nose and caught sight of Red. “Hey, how about you and me, Red? Arm wrestling match, let’s go!”

Crooks didn’t know if she intentionally chose that matchup to make him feel better, or if she just thought a challenge would be more fun, but she went down about as quickly against Red as he had against her.

“I don’t get this game,” the giant octopus muttered, releasing Undyne's hand.

“It’s just a little competition,” Undyne grinned, nursing her sore wrist. “To see who’s stronger.”

_ So why we usin’ arms then? _ he wondered in confusion.  _ Ain’t our legs and tails stronger? _

“Why’re you thinking so hard about it?” the fish lady laughed. “Jeez. It’s just for fun.”

Red furrowed his brow even more than he had been. He had begun his spiral into confusion.  _ Why the hell are we decidin’ who’s stronger than who? I thought shit like that didn’t matter ta mermaids. ‘S there some hierarchy I don’t know about? What the hell about this is s’pposed ta be fun? _

Blueberry snuck up behind red and put his little hands over Red’s eye sockets. That derailed his train of thought pretty quickly. 

Sans gave his mate a pat on the shoulder and pulled blueberry away. The bubbly child seized what appeared to him an obvious opportunity to hug his mom.

“Don’t think about it too much,” Sans told him, cradling Blueberry. “You don't have to understand it. Everybody's having fun."

Red looked around the room and noted that the exceptions to Sans's statement seemed to be the other deep ocean natives like him. He huffed and accepted that it must just be another bizarre cultural thing he didn't get about mermaids. Embracing the philosophy that it didn't matter, he pulled his mate in for a cuddle and swam off to the corner of the room. Sans was just as happy to have an excuse to be lazy and watch without participating. 

The competition ended with a stunned-silent atmosphere when Stretch (another victim forcibly challenged by Undyne) defeated her in the straight-up competition of strength, calmly pulled out his phone, and proclaimed he was going to go read in his room.

"... by that lazy kid... my warrior's pride..." she was heard muttering as Alphys rubbed her back.

"Th-there there. He has an entirely different physiology than we do."

In the end, Chara, Frisk, and Asriel cheered Undyne up by pointing out that Stretch had no real combat experience or warrior's spirit, so she was still more reliable in a fight. (Though in truth, Stretch had been forced to learn self-defense from Red, but it was true there wasn't such a thing as a warrior's spirit anywhere inside his body.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arm strength rankings:  
> 1\. Red  
> 2\. Axe  
> 3\. Asgore  
> 4\. Stretch  
> 5\. Undyne  
> 6\. Toriel  
> 7\. Blackberry  
> 8\. Blueberry  
> 9\. Crooks  
> 10\. Alphys  
> 11\. Chara  
> 12\. Frisk  
> 13\. Sans  
> 14\. Asriel  
> 15\. MK


	5. What's an Attack Mage?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *In which we figure out what an attack mage is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long-standing question, I know. :p
> 
> Takes place after chapter 42 of HTAF.
> 
> Canon

“Hey, Geno?” Blue swam over and asked, “I’ve been wondering… you’re an attack mage, right?”

Geno looked at the kid and frowned, nodding. “Yeah. Why?”

“What  _ is  _ that?”

“Huh? What’s an attack mage?” Geno was momentarily bewildered before remembering how small this school was. Even if this place was a collection of rare and powerful creatures, he was still the only attack mage this kid had ever seen, and he hadn’t exactly been flaunting his powers. He had been recovering from a terrible injury, after all. 

Geno held his arm awkwardly in his opposite hand. “Did you know there used to be other shallow water mer here besides mermaids?”

“Really!”

Geno nodded. He spoke slowly, in a soft and quiet voice. “But they’re not here anymore. See, mermaids easily feel threatened, and a few generations ago they decided they wanted this part of the ocean to themselves. Attack mages are the offspring of magically powerful mermaids who were born and raised to be the spears and shields of our kind.”

Blueberry just nodded. The subtle talk about war and genocide went over his head, but the concept of powerful mates having powerful children wasn’t strange to him. In a way, he could be considered such an offspring. 

“Does that mean you’re really strong?”

Geno nodded. “Physically, no, but magically, I’m probably the strongest.”

“Can I see one of your attacks?!” The little kid’s eyes were sparkling, but Geno looked even less comfortable than before. 

“I can’t really… I don’t have any weak attacks. They’re dangerous, alright?” He wished he could suggest showing the kid some defensive magic, but those weren’t really visible, so he doubted Blue would be satisfied with that. He hoped he could just talk the kid out of wanting to see it. 

“Pretty please?” The kid threw his all into begging adorably, and Geno felt his soul squeezing him. 

“Why not humor the kid?” Death chuckled. He grew big enough to be seen and pointed a finger at a small Stone Mountain under the water. “Look, there’s nothing sentient living over that way. Not for twenty miles.”

Geno sighed deeply and nodded. “Fine. Just once, okay? Film it if you think you’ll want to see it again.”

Blue nodded and got his phone out. Geno took a deep breath and pointed his palm toward the distant undersea mountain. He said nothing, no fancy attack name or battle cry. His eyes glowed bright red and his pupils shrank to pinpricks as he charged up an insane amount of magic in just about a second. It was more magic than Blue knew the red mermaid even had. He was sensitive to that sort of thing for some reason. But as soon as he started charging his attack, the attack mage’s soul spun into overdrive, rotating at high speeds and generating dozens of times more magic than Blue would make in a few hours. 

The attack was complete in a second. Fully formed, it shot away from Geno’s hand like a red laser, pierced the mountain six miles away in an instant, and then exploded on contact. The noise and tremors reached the two mermaids where they were floating, and when the dust settled, more than half of the undersea mountain was gone. 

Even Blue didn’t know how to react to the crazy level of power he just saw. Even to him, just grinning and saying it was awesome felt wrong. Axe and Red were killers—blue was used to killers and he knew they were people all the same. Geno was a  _ weapon _ , and Blue didn’t know how to react to a living weapon. 

He may seem like a very accepting kid, and he was, but that was partly because he’d been interacting with beings that others found frightening from a young age. He was used to them. When he was faced with an entirely new kind of beast, even that happy-go-lucky little skeleton needed a moment to adjust. 

All Blue could think of was to ask a question he suddenly had. “How come there wasn’t any big explosion when you sank that ship?”

Geno shrugged. “I was drugged and barely conscious. I couldn’t use my full power, and just using a little nearly overcharged me with determination and melted my skull.” He subconsciously reached up to the healing-resistant wounds Crooks had healed for him. 

“Okay.” Blue furrowed his brow. “So why are mermaids scared of deep ocean monsters when they have mages like you?”

Geno smiled softly. “There aren’t many attack mages out there, and our job is mostly to stay in the school and use defensive magic. We can’t hunt because, well,” he glanced back at the broken mountain, “you saw. But no meroctopus is going to storm a school. It’s always hunting parties that run into them and come back damaged, if they come back at all. Schools have been whittled down like that until they had no choice but to join together just to have enough working hands.”

The attack mage smiled sadly. “That sort of thing is especially hard for us to watch. Knowing we could beat the enemy but never getting the chance… And since we can’t hunt, we need a school that can hunt for us or we’ll just starve.” He shrugged. “I’m strong, but my skills are too niche, and I’m pretty much just dead weight when they aren’t needed.”

“You’re not dead weight! You helped do the dishes after dinner last night!”

Geno looked at the kid strangely. It sounded like a forced compliment, whether or not it actually was. Before he could say anything, though, Death had grown to Geno’s size again and was examining his rib cage while chuckling. 

“Wow, that really is interesting. There’s almost more determination than soul in there.” Geno backed up a bit as Death casually prodded at him. “Could you not touch me? You might actually kill me one of these days.”

“And? You should be dead already, so do I look like I care?”

Blue saw that Geno was chatting with Death and puffed up his cheeks, pouting. “Hey, how come Death doesn’t let me see him anymore? I want to be his friend too!”

“Tell the kid he’s too handsome, so it makes me feel shy.”

“The hell?” Geno twisted his face in a weird expression at the pure, obvious bullshit the jellyfish just spouted without blinking. The red mermaid shook his head and said to Blue, “I’m not sure, but I think just looking at him shortens your lifespan. He likes you and wants you to live a long time.” Geno muttered under his breath, “So I wish he’d stop always floating into my field of view.”

Blue could actually hear Geno’s muttering, but he ignored it. “Wow, really? I’m a better friend than I thought if he likes me that much after we only talked once!”

Death chuckled where only Geno could hear him, and the red mermaid sighed. “Let’s go back to the den, okay? They’re probably wondering what that explosion was. They might be worried about us.”

“Oh! Good point!”

Blue dashed back to the den with Geno trying and failing to keep up with him. Surprisingly, none of the deep ocean mer looked particularly worried after finding out what kind of destructive power Geno was capable of. 

“Huh. For some reason, I thought you guys would feel threatened or something.”

Red shrugged, Axe chuckled, and Crooks smiled sweetly. Then they all spoke the exact same thought aloud: “You’d have to hit us first.”

Geno remembered he was looking at two master stealth mages and a man who could teleport. The power balance in this school was… so very broken, considering an attack mage like him wasn’t necessarily at the top. There were overpowered people and hard-counters at every turn. Geno caught sight of the literal god of death in the corner of his eye and couldn’t help but sigh deeply.

“I’m surrounded by monsters. Seriously.”


End file.
